oh, my little town

i now live in a little town, by choice. we had every opportunity to start over and chose to be here. it has its great highs, and sure its lows. every place does. the things we liked and the connections we had here far outweighed the other options. but oh, my little town is frustrating sometimes. this is one of those times.

there is a beautiful graffiti mural that has gone up by a 20 year old artist whose mom runs the community farm store along one of the major roads in town, paralleling the train tracks which hopefully in the not-too-distant future will be once again carrying tourists up and down vancouver island when british columbia gets its funding back in order. on a crumbling brown wall behind a closed hotel cyrus genier painted in beautifully bright greens purples blues and pinks the word community. and now so many including the town and councillors of duncan are up in arms, ordering the removal of the crime.

the problem they claim is that the art is in the style of graffiti and does fall innately into the description of the town graffiti policy, and that it wasn't permitted which would additionally require it to be in the "heritage" paint scheme which i'm sure just means dull pale colors.

first of all, everyone seems to be overlooking the content - it says community, for crying out loud. it is inclusive and done with great care, not in spray bomb haste. it covered a dilapidated old wall that itself was a worse eyesore. there are buildings like the old movie theatre that are old and unkept, or the abandoned blue building on chemainus rd that sits on the entry into town. my point is there are so many bigger problems to solve then a wall that reads community. and maybe i'm inherently biased based on my age, arts education, outsider status - but i truly think those ideas cast aside, it's still a good thing for this little town to look beyond what they've always been and think about who they are, who they are becoming, who they want to be.

and while sure maybe a permit would have been the moral way to go, i agree with the owner who says she doesn't think she would have gotten approval had she gone about it the traditional way. there is a stigma in this town against the new, but in the short 3 years we've been here i can honestly attest to change, to a lightness in the air, where grandparents are carrying their ipads with pride, and old houses are being bought renovated and sold, where a new accredited university is handing out degrees.

change is hard, sometimes it's slow and sometimes it hits you over the head,
one little wall at a time.

http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/168501706.html?mobile=true